


in vigil i stood

by ronsenboobi (snewvilliurs)



Category: Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi
Summary: With nothing left of Crowe’s life but a half-empty box of her belongings in his hands, Nyx looks forward.A study of Nyx's psyche in the last three days of his life, starting with Crowe's death.





	in vigil i stood

**Author's Note:**

> Because there's so much going on beneath the surface and the movie doesn't do justice to all the things I feel Nyx had to offer. I also hoped to give more space to the emotional effects of Crowe's death, because the narrative does her so dirty and she deserves better than to be a plot device forgotten after two scenes to give the guys some pathos. (Note that I personally write Nyx as having had feelings for Crowe, who is a lesbian, but I think I left it vague enough to accomodate other interpretations.)
> 
> Title from "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" by Walt Whitman.

Nyx remembers.

That has always been the problem. His memories are hard, unmoving stone as much as they are quicksilver, bright flashes that come and go but always stay. He remembers the way the breeze felt from the clifftops in Galahd; he remembers the way Selena would smile when he let her have a sip of the drinks he created at the bar; he remembers the look on Libertus’ face the day the Niffs came, shadowed by the looming threat of those airships blotting out the sky.

He remembers the words Crowe said when the memories gnawed at him so much he thought there would be nothing left of him. He was a mess that day, the third of a rare string of four days off after a big mission; restlessness had done its work and wrapped him up in phantom aches so tightly that he felt he couldn’t breathe. Even just leaving his apartment was more than he could ask of himself, so he did what he thought was the smart thing then and drank when his body would no longer sleep. 

And she came with coffee and a pastry, of all things, like she knew.

“Libertus says he’s been texting you,” she said as she unceremoniously pushed past him, even as he tried to protest. He didn’t want her to see him like this, not her—anyone but her—but Crowe was always bad at doing what people wanted when she decided it wasn’t her way. “Since when has radio silence been your thing?”

“I’m busy,” Nyx said. The words slurred together more than he hoped, and it made Crowe snort and pluck the beer out of his hand to push the coffee into it. She helped herself to the rest of the beer.

“I’m sure being self-destructive is really time-consuming. You could use a better hobby, though. Maybe crafts?”

“Can we not do this today?”

“Why? Do what?” she asked. Through the haze, Nyx remembers how lightly she spoke as she plopped down on his bed, though her eyes were sharp and precise. “It wouldn’t kill us to get real every once in a while. Today seems like a good time to me.”

Slumping in his armchair, Nyx avoided her gaze and took a drink of the coffee. It didn’t even do him the courtesy of burning his tongue. “Not for me. Getting real is the last thing I want today, so please, just—thank you for the coffee, but you can go. Tell Libertus I slept in, is all.”

“It’s not even three in the afternoon and you’re wasted.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

“Okay, Nyx,” Crowe said, leaning forward. For a moment, Nyx thought she was getting ready to leave, and that made things worse. He wanted her to leave even less than he wanted her to be there. “What’s going on?”

He can still hear, even if distantly, the dry, humourless sound of his laughter then. “What’s going on? The same thing, all the time. Everything. I’m exhausted, I always am, and I can’t see an end to it but I have to, to—” he faltered, trailing off. His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Just… ev—everything.”

There were no words for the rest, but somehow, Crowe understood that. She saw how Nyx wouldn’t look her in the eye and how tightly he drew his mouth into a line as he fought for and against the words, and she understood, more than she ever let on. Even though he always remembers too much, he doesn’t remember how she looked at him in that moment, because he couldn’t make himself meet her eyes. But he does remember the tone of her voice, how sure and strangely gentle it was.

“All that everything doesn’t have to be just yours, and it doesn’t have to be every day, or at all. You won’t forget, even if you keep looking forward, one day at a time.”

Forward.

  


**01**

With nothing left of Crowe’s life but a half-empty box of her belongings in his hands, Nyx looks forward. He lets the concrete fill his veins, lock his bones together into stillness, barely feels the shock and the grief as his gaze falls nowhere, as long as it is ahead. The jerky steps Libertus takes with the crutches grow further and further away, but he doesn’t look over his shoulder, doesn’t look back even if it means leaving him alone when he should be going after him. Forward.

 _Not like this,_ Crowe would say, _not at the cost of everything else._ She might punch his shoulder, even, but Nyx is too numb to even begin to imagine what it might feel like. Grief shouldn’t feel new, not to him; every part of him that reminds him he’s breathing has been reminding him of that too-raw ache for half his life. And yet it does. There is a stillness that fills the spaces of the familiar hurt, like his heart has stopped beating: that’s new.

Even if he does it feeling like a ghost, he tries to break the stillness, to keep moving, forward, forward, never back. Forward is through the barracks, past the two Glaives sitting together clutching each other’s hand in harrowed silence—Lyra and Elea, the ones she affectionately called her girls. Forward is into the streets as night and rain begin to fall together. Forward is his flat, because there’s nowhere else, even if it feels wrong to bring what’s left of Crowe home like she’s some material thing and not the force of nature she is. _Was._ Forward is emptying the box on his desk and lighting a candle and incense for her, the Galahdian way.

Nyx is no stranger to sleepless nights. Of course this is another; of course he doesn’t sleep. His home is filled with ghosts, and he is the most haunting of all of them.

  


**02**

Forward.

Guard duty means he can stay at the back of the reception and keep his eyes ahead, his hands locked tight behind his back so that he doesn’t have to feel like they’re too empty. The hairpin Crowe carried for the princess feels like it’s burning a hole into his jacket pocket, heavy as a ruin. He can’t decide if it’s an anchor that will drag him down into the depths or keep him rooted to the ground, or maybe even pull him back to her, but when he put on his uniform he couldn’t leave it behind.

His mind should be blank but for the task in front of him, but in the statuesque stillness that leaves him cloaked in anonymity to all the important people around him, his memory wanders back to an old story. Libertus told it to him when they were young—too young, in fact, for a tale so dark he barely remembers anything of it. All that remains of it is the sad, uneasy feeling it left in him, alongside a single image: a woman taken with grief who filled her pockets with rocks before walking into a lake. Maybe the hairpin is his rocks, and the lake is the Kingsglaive, but the uniform feels like the only way forward.

There’s a part of him that’s afraid Crowe will fade away if he leaves and there’s nothing left of them to keep her a Glaive. It’s selfish, he knows, to let it rest all on Libertus and himself when Crowe’s family was so much more than that, but he has always had that ugly part of him. Selfish enough to stay alive. Selfish enough to abandon his home. Selfish enough to keep serving the king who gave the orders that killed Crowe.

When the princess comes to stand next to him, his breath comes shorter, burning hot and caustic within his lungs. This is the last thing he needs now: just the sight of her, the sound of her voice, everything is too bright and soft and gentle and alive. Crowe was harder around the edges; sharper, like a spark. Crowe was, and the princess is. 

She asks for his name. It should be the simplest question to answer, but the words are hard to form around the grief; there’s no space for his own self when he’s clinging to Crowe like this, trying to fill every thought with her so that she doesn’t fade away. Nyx Ulric is alive when too many aren’t. It’s not a name he wants to say, but he can’t speak Crowe’s name, either, not when the princess asks about her in turn.

“Where might I find this brave soldier?”

 _In a bodybag,_ Nyx thinks bitterly, but he can’t even open his mouth to let the words loose. It’s better off this way, because it feels too harsh to say to someone speaking to him with so much kindness, but the way his throat is closed aches and his eyes sting. Everything feels too tight, too much. _It doesn’t have to be just yours,_ Crowe said, but in this moment, it is. He can’t look at the princess; he can’t bear to see what is sure to be a great deal of honest sympathy in her eyes for fear of unraveling. The hairpin is cool metal, but it might as well be hot coals burning his skin—he just wants it gone, out of his hands. It’s become too heavy and he feels his grip slipping from holding the weight of it.

“She would have wanted you to have it,” he says, because she would have; she always did like making pretty girls smile. It isn’t a gift that makes the princess smile, though; not like this. Nyx glances down at her hands, holding it so solemnly, and he realizes that she’s swearing to carry a piece of Crowe’s memory with her. Always.

She is too kind, too good. He is too raw to bear any of it; he can't, not today.

  


**03**

Forward is racing through the dizzying clusterfuck that becomes the princess situation from the moment Luche tells him she’s missing. Forward is marching through the Citadel like a battering ram, swatting away each and every hand that tries to stop him, and feeling nothing but the focused rush of immediacy.

*******

The flashes of Selena’s voice have gotten more frequent again, like his spirit is trying to fill in the empty spaces of Crowe dying alone, away from him. He finds himself freefalling, the magic worlds away from his fingers when he tries to warp—it’s a nightmare, he tells himself for a moment in the whirlwind, the way he always falls and wakes up with a start just as the ground races up to meet him. But it isn't a nightmare because the wind is in his ears and he sees the world tumble around him and _no, no, no no no not like this,_ and for the first time in a long while he's afraid of death. Just for a split second, just before the magic wraps around him and his fingers are strong enough to let go of his kukri, warping again and again, scrambling to find something to hold onto—but long enough for the fear to stick.

Deathseeker, Drautos calls him sometimes, never a compliment. A man like the captain understands the difference between the reckless desire for a cheap thrill and something deeper, something written inside the bones that says the body goes on even as the soul has stopped needing to. He has long since read the writing on Nyx and seen the conflict between giving a damn and wanting to die; “deathseeker” is a reprimand, swatting Nyx on the nose with the reality that he only speaks of in jest. Now, though, it could not be more wrong. Death is something to fight against, looming terrifyingly over so fragile a life that he has never clung to so much in over fifteen years. The sort of fear that pushes.

He's shaking as he holds onto the airship with everything he has, exhaustion already seeping into his muscles with the magic coursing through him harder than is reasonable. Everything comes into focus as he pushes himself up: he has to leave Selena behind, and Galahd, and Crowe, no matter how hard it is when he holds them so tightly. Forward, for now.

Into the belly of the beast he goes, not realizing that the horrors have barely even begun.

*******

Always a fraction of a moment too late, or so it seems.

There are mountains of wrong decisions between Nyx and the right course by the time it all clicks together, and there’s no breaching them no matter how fast he races to get to Pelna. He’s too late to try saving him and just in time to watch him be broken. Later, it’s going to feel like a part of himself has been ripped apart, but there’s no time now, because as horrifying as it is, Pelna buys him the time he needs to get the princess out. His fingers are cold as ice as they grab her arm and he starts to run. 

Forward is the nausea of leaving a friend behind to die, but it’s also the only way. Forward is through the chaos, holding the fragility of his life and his duty to keep the princess safe between trembling fingers. Forward is through one of his own comrades, furious and sick and wrong as the Kingsglaive crumbles under the staggering weight of betrayal.

Everything around him is falling apart, and the only thing he can keep together is himself. So long as he keeps himself fighting, he doesn’t need to think, doesn’t need to feel, and he can stay whole and not even realize whether or not he’s breathing. That’s fine; he just needs to move. Forward.

They find a measure of stillness as Nyx sits with his hands around the controls of the airship—if only because they’re not physically running for their lives at that moment—but he still can’t catch his breath even as the sun begins its descent towards the horizon. His mind is racing, scrambling for a path to take, but he knows going _back_ isn’t the way, no matter how much the princess wants him to. There’s nothing of safety left for her in Insomnia, just like there’s nothing left for him in the past no matter how hard he holds on to it. They need to go forward, even if he doesn’t know where that is.

But the princess is more like him than he realized.

“I do not fear death,” she says, and he can’t help everything that rips through him as he hears the words. _I didn’t, either,_ he wants to say, _I didn’t fear death until today._ He thought he was brave, too, but bravery has gotten him nowhere except for a pedestal from which to watch the people he loves die or leave or be left behind in a world that is too cruel for them. Crowe was brave. Pelna was brave. Now they’re dead.

“Enough with the brave princess act!” he snaps, and though the words are aimed at her, they’re more personal than he would admit.

 _Oh, you would love her,_ Nyx thinks as the princess does not falter and instead looks him dead in the eye, completely unimpressed. The whole day has been a pure fucking hurricane that he's managed to get himself caught in the eye of, but for a few seconds everything seems to slow as it hits him. He's thinking like he would speak to Crowe, like they’re going to meet up later and he can tell her and Libertus all about his day. For just a brief moment he lets himself be tugged back to her, letting the distinctive feeling of familiarity wash over him because, yes, Crowe would absolutely be smitten over the princess. This was her place to be, not his.

Even as he’s stuck, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret carves her way forward. He can only follow, because Crowe would. Because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t honour the duty she died for.

*******

Nyx has had a very long day. Every minute of it has been burned into his body; each and every moment has seeped through muscle and tangled itself in his ribcage like vines over the stone of a ruin. There have been moments where the exhaustion seemed to rip through him, adrenaline rushing and then crashing and rushing again, but he’s pushed through because he had to. He’s pushed through weariness, pushed through the sorrow and fury eating at him. 

Even after two bullets, he thinks he can still get up. The pain nearly blinds him, tearing at his skin, his vision flashing as Luche’s boot digs into the wounds—but this isn't over, because he won't let it be over until he's gotten the princess to Altissia, no matter what the road holds. It’s his duty; not because the king has given it to him with a plea, but because it was Crowe’s duty. It doesn't matter that there's a part of him that wants to lie down and sleep for ten years just so he can forget about everything that’s been lost or destroyed. He can take anything: all the hits, all the hurts, even one of his closest comrades shooting him twice without so much as blinking. He can even take Luche smiling as he does it.

Then he says Crowe’s name, dripping with venom; it’s all it takes for everything Nyx has been been keeping together to come undone. He has had a _very_ long day, and he could tear out Luche’s throat. But Luche has taken even that from him because he can’t get up, can’t reach for him. He can only curl into himself and fight off the image of Crowe dying alone with only pain and anger and betrayal.

Luche runs off after Lunafreya and leaves Nyx bleeding on the ground like he left Crowe. He’s where she was: suffering, cursing Luche with everything he’s got even though the words never reach his lips because it hurts, it hurts so much, but not as much as knowing he’s failed. He’s failed the king, he’s failed Lunafreya, but most of all, he’s failed Crowe—unable to save her, unable to carry out her duty, unable to avenge her. His hands feel so empty without the feeling of tearing Luche apart himself.

He wishes he could feel empty, too, and as the headlights blind him he thinks for a moment of hazy confusion that maybe his time has come. But it hasn’t, and maybe there’s a shred of justice in the world, because two things happen: Lunafreya, wearing the hairpin in Crowe’s memory, leads her murderer to burn himself alive with only a few words; and Libertus, as Luche screams, runs over Drautos and reveals him to be the greatest traitor of them all.

When Libertus yells his name, Nyx finds it in himself—in what’s left of him—to hold himself up off the ground, even just a little bit. He makes himself guard Lunafreya even if she’s holding him up more than anything. He’s still breathing. There is still strength in his body, and that means he still has his own orders. He almost wants to smile at Drautos— _Glauca_ —because the two of them know that there is no loyalty that will hold him back from his captain.

 _For hearth and home,_ he tells himself as he takes the ring from Lunafreya’s hands. For Selena, for Pelna, for King Regis, for Crowe. For Libertus and Lunafreya. For the past that will move him forward and for a future, even if not his own. 

Deathseeker or no, he already knows he won’t live through the night.

*******

His last thoughts are hazy flashes of memory as the dawn spreads into the sky above: Galahd in the low light of morning, gold spreading over vast expanses of lush green wilderness; Selena shaking him awake to go watch the sunrise together, their mother smiling sleepily with a hot mug of tea in her hand. Pelna stifling a yawn as he stands bleary-eyed beside him for drills at the asscrack of dawn. Crowe standing against the backdrop of the bright sky, with the sun kissing her hair with the colour of the fire that so easily burns from her hands. Wherever they are now, he hopes it’s the same place he’s going, that maybe he’ll see them again. 

Peace spreads over him like a veil as his vision blurs and darkens around the edges, bittersweet as he thinks of Crowe and of Libertus; he only aches for the thought of leaving him behind, but it is a fleeting hurt. Everything finally, finally fades.

What a life.


End file.
